2023 was the hottest year on record and we’re not even close to changing our behavior. We’re pushing the climate to chage fast and we may not be able to handle these changes. The planet will be just fine, but people are going to have a hard time as sea levels rise, and ocean currents shift to change weather patterns everywhere.
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Are there any reliable stats on how many people (Americans citizens, or otherwise) believe/recognize this?
It can be discouraging for me, often in Bitcoin-adjacent discussions, when the more conspiracy-minded plebs fail to verify, and simply trust their favorite counter-narrative influencers.
I dive deeply into “don’t trust, verify” on this topic, and the independent science around global warming suggests that it’s very fucking real, albeit with an unclear timeline.
A handful of people whom I love and respect think it’s a “deep state” scam. But “badly aligned incentives” isn’t the same thing as “it’s a plan devised to keep you in your house at all times and control your food” 🙄
Which brings me back around to wondering: is it the niche, highly skeptical Bitcoin circles where these perspectives prosper? Or are there still a lot of people drinking the Fox News Machine kool-aid?
The claim hottest year on record is misleading at best, or a scam.
Oceans, the heatsink of the planet, were 18 degrees C warmer 50 million years ago.
You use a keyword of “belief”. The climate crisis is very much that. Any “crisis” claims are difficult to measure, or verify. Thus most folk defer to an anointed expert class, and do not seek to verify further.
Greenpeace Founder Dr Moore aptly titled Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom goes into various crisis claims, and does not spare sources for their rejection.
As for people having a hard time, humans have never been safer from climate thanks to humans ability to adapt to a changing climate largely thanks to fossil fuels.
If you are worried about rising sea levels, hire Dutch engineers. About a third of their country is under the sea level, and they are doing quite well (correct me if I am wrong nostr:npub17plqkxhsv66g8quxxc9p5t9mxazzn20m426exqnl8lxnh5a4cdns7jezx0 ).
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Elsat, appreciate you chiming in.
When I read “on record” I typically take that to mean “since humans started taking regular measurements”. I’d also be curious to know whether the planet would have been tolerable for human activity 50 million years ago.
I think there’s a “middle way” here, that can acknowledge the impact human activity is having on global temperatures, which is likely to create *both* negative humanitarian outcomes, as well as improved technology for managing the environment in which we live. (I’m familiar with the “fossil future” theory from Alex Epstein).
I’m not in the camp of “we need to panic and control how people live”. I’m sure you’ve seen me write many times about how individual choice is always the way forward. And when the billionaire WEF “climate advocates” drive ever-higher carbon emissions in their private jets while telling people in developing countries to eat cricket flour, it’s hard not to wonder, wtf is this about. And I’m certainly not choosing my investments based on wall street’s idea of “environmentally sound” choices because we all know those incentives are broken.
But when I hold all the different factors, including historical events, independent science, mainstream narratives, general hypocrisy, and the incentives of people and firms on different sides of the discussion, my reasoned conclusion continues to be that it would be really great if we could put less carbon/methane into the atmosphere and increase human energy consumption from sources that cause fewer negative externalities.
Side note - One of the things I love about nostr is the opportunity it provides to engage with people whom I like and respect, on topics that are traditionally “inflammatory” or “triggering” on classic social media — which in other contexts always seems to lead to reductive useless banter, and instead typically find common ground, or at least mutual respect.
Heading to bed, but always glad to engage. It’s a special thing we’re building here.
Appreciate having this discussion on nostr. If you are familiar with Alex Epstein’s work then you are on a great path. I agree 100% that keeping an eye on things is the right way.
What I see is that through state schooling, corporate journalism propaganda, and idealogical universities the narrative is anti-human.
I never hear an anti-beaver, or anti-buffalo narrative for suiting the environment to their needs!
When I hear generalities like crisis, negative externalities, negative humanitarian outcomes I prefer to discuss to specific outcomes, and measures.
One of the points Alex brings home for me is that humans are experts at adapting to the climate. How is this possible: short-term prediction and monitoring (we know a hurricane is coming), quick response (evacuate hurricane zone), and human constructed shelter (hurricane shelter).
In terms of numbers, humans have never been safer from the climate! See chart below.
Therefore, if humans are safer from the climate than ever before, it is not logical to claim “climate crisis”, and use this as a justification for the expansion of the fiat corporate-banker state. 
An example of the polluted discourse: Oil bad anti-human standard article from corpo press: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/10/oil-ads-lights-on-energy
Thanks for the thoughtful dialogue.
It makes it clear that the layers of nuance around the entire discussion are not typically fit for social media blurbs and media soundbites.
People can agree that human activity (specifically, the rapid addition of carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere) is increasing global temperatures, and then still disagree about what to do with that information.
Draconian, top-down regulations are (as usual) more likely to hurt average people than to help solve a problem. And as bitcoiners, we all know that “follow the money” reliably sniffs out corruption — and few groups are better funded than the oil lobby (or have such an existential incentive to fight for their industry).
But pure business self-interest doesn’t always lead to efficient outcomes either. The oil lobby funded some of the anti-nuclear environmentalists, creating massive inefficiencies in energy markets and reducing the potential for human flourishing that continues to this day (see Germany).
I can hold this while also acknowledging the ESG funds are often complete bullshit, and many of the panic pieces in mainstream media are often little more than clickbait.
All of this is one reason I’m insanely bullish on Bitcoin. Stranded/renewable/sustainable energy sources are often cheap and perfect for miners, yet disregarded by public utilities because (until now) there’s been no efficient way to monetize that energy. See Africa/Gridless.
It’s yet another of Satoshi’s perfect consequences (whether intended or not). The pure self-interest of energy companies — renewable or otherwise — can and is being used to reduce atmospheric methane releases, support cheap renewable energy to power entire villages, and so much more. (Landfill mining!!!)
🤝 discussion.
Yeh, I’m optimistic on the latter as well. Fiat capital misallocation will be greatly reduced.
In policy monologue, and corpo-speak the starting point is “climate crisis”, therefore action X, Y, Z.
To add a wrench to the “most people agree” statement on co2, if you look at the data over tens of millions of years - it is not clear that the trace gas co2 drives temperature change (see chart below).
The lack of understanding of the uncertainty and unknowns of the system, and the sketchy motives of control and fiat redistribution make me extremely skeptical of policy founded on no credible basis. 
Totally respect any skepticism of policy implementation. Especially when there’s wealth and power on the line — which there usually is.
I’m always a bit wary of charts like this, because there’s so much context excluded. Which of those periods would have been tolerable for human life, agriculture, etc.? Were there insane storms and fires or was it placid and chill? Also dinosaurs 😉
My general understanding is that measuring carbon over periods of millions of years tends to yield a much more vague picture, compared to what we can learn from carbon deposits (?) from recent centuries.
As I tend to be more likely to mistrust the incumbent powers-that-be, if I had to pick, I’d say it’s more likely that there’s more misinformation coming from oil/gas-producing countries, companies, lobbies, than from your garden-variety (pun intended) environmentalists.
But media is broken, money/incentives are broken, and sourcing reliable information is tough nowadays, (mostly) regardless of viewpoint.
At least there’s one thing we know of that continually churns out consensus-based truths every ten mins
Can confirm, but tbh you should move here altogether, we have good tech universities and always score top 5 in quality if life! 😀
Is anyone sure that the records don't lie?!
I find it reckless that we continue to emit CO2 at a rate FAR in excess of what we have any hope of drawing back down for the next few thousand years. This is a one-way irreversable experiment. I really hope the climate skeptics are right, because if they are wrong there is no way to fix this.
nostr:npub1acg6thl5psv62405rljzkj8spesceyfz2c32udakc2ak0dmvfeyse9p35c consider the following:
1) plants die at 150 ppm. we need these to survive
2) co2 levels were down to 180 ppm the last ice age, very close to plant starvation levels!
3) multi-cellular life started at 5000 ppm - life does not die here; it does quite well (see cambrian explosion)
Given the above, is humans increasing co2 from 280 to 420 really a bad thing, considering the improvement of the human lifespan, and quality of life from fossil fueled energy?
All you say is true. Life will be fine. Earth has been much hotter with much more CO2. More CO2 will improve plant growth. And we eat plants so that part is a good thing.
But humans evolved while CO2 was below 400ppm - the last time it was that high, 20 million years ago, there were no humans. We kind of got used to 280ppm.
I'm not saying we can't tolerate it (our speciality is standing upright, sweating, and persistance hunting which means we excel when it is hot... if we go back to the old ways). I'm not saying we cannot adapt (we will build sea walls, people will migrate, a bunch of cold tundra will become livable for the first time).
All I'm saying is this: IF it turns out that the consequences end up sucking for some reason that we did or did not expect (e.g. massively violent storms that no human has ever witnessed, huge unpredictable climate fluctuations that make crop planning nearly impossible, etc), THEN we cannot go backwards, we will just have to live with it for a thousand years.
Because the basic physics of drawing down CO2 are so fundamental that no technological innovation is going to do better than plants already do. And that's no where near as fast as we are emitting it.
Any hopes of a technological innovation in this regard IMHO is a fairy tale. It's not quite as impossible as faster-than-light travel, going backwards in time, or perpetual motion machines, but it is nearly as impractical as humans flying around in jet ships like the Jetsons, costing far more energy to draw down than to emit.
NOTE: I didn't do any research for this post, this is off the top of my head. I may have said something wrong. This was a best effort reply.
We foolishly keep acting like this genie can be put back in the bottle with all this CO2 emission control nonsense. It cannot. We are terraformers. We did it poorly.
Now let’s do it well. Thankfully we have the opportunity to build a sound economy to drive the growth in production we need to terraform at continental scale. The mad pursuit of energy to feed bitcoin miners during hyperbitcoinization will form the backbone of the energy economy we will require to take feet off the ocean and flood the great deserts with desalinated water.
De-desert the desert 🔥. This book is on my shelf precisely for this reason. 
It’s fine to think about and have concern with these questions.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know the answer to your question/ assumption that
1) co2 will continue to increase linearly,
and
2) the complex system that is earth does not have a mechanism to store co2 at greater rates, and
3) humans cannot adapt to life at 5000.
As someone who has not spent his entire life on these topics, this seems like it could be a credible question to explore.
Going to your If/Then statement: if you are claiming crisis the onus is on you to prove this.
Thus far, humans have never been safer from climate.
Using the term crisis today is counter-productive in many ways.
I don't call it a crisis. I have about the same view as Michael Shellenberger who wrote "Apocalypse Never," which isn't actually too far different from the view of Bill Gates, but stated differently. They both believe we need to keep using oil right now in order to eventually solve the climate crisis, that far too many people completely discount how well we adapt (e.g. sea walls), and that it isn't an emergency or "crisis" but it is a looming eventuality that we need to continue to work on.
👍 Shellenberger is a sane voice in the field of climate speak.
